The Burwell Home Page

Burwell is a large village of about
5000 people, situated in the County of
Cambridgeshire, about 10 miles to the north east of Cambridge itself.

Geographically, it occupies an interesting position, straddling the border
between the
dry, chalky lands to the south, and the low-lying Fens, formerly wet marshland,
now
drained and put to agriculture. Agriculture, in fact, dominates the landscape
on both
sides, but their character - and the character of the different parts of the
village,
therefore - is quite different.

The parish of Burwell is a large one - though not quite as large as it was
before the
1950's, when it included half the neighbouring village of Reach, and before the
1990's,
when a large area in the south was taken away - and reflects this diversity of
land and
people. In the north lies Adventurer's Fen, not entirely drained and planted
until the
1940's; to the east and west the broad expanses of cornfields; and to the south
the
flat grasslands of Newmarket Heath. The county boundary between Cambridgeshire
and
Suffolk is immediately to the south of the village.

The main road through the village is the B1102, following the fen edge from
Stow-cum-Quy to the south-west, to Mildenhall to the north-east. The B1103
leaves the
centre of the village at Pound Hill towards Exning and Newmarket.

The inhabited part of the parish grew up in at least three parts: High Town
in the
south, centred around the church and the High Street; North Street, close by
the fen,
its attention turned more towards the river; and Newnham, between the two.
Looking at
a detailed map of the village, this division can be discerned, and only over a
long
period have the three parts become one, stretching for some two miles along a
single
main street. According to one writer, the village was, for this reason, often
referred
to as 'Long Burwell'.

1

There were certainly small Roman
settlements in the area. Near the site of one, on a
'low hill overlooking a spring'2 - around St Mary's church - a Saxon village
grew up
which was probably protected by some kind of fortification . A few hundred
metres away
to the north another Roman settlement developed into a 'long linear Saxon
street
village' - the High Street.

North Street, 'a mile away across the fields and close to the fens' was
certainly in
existence by the early 14th century when it was first recorded, but is probably
much
older; it has 'a curious sinuous street' which lies parallel to and has the
same shape
as the headlands of the mediaeval common fields to the east. It seems to have
developed within the existing common fields and used a headland between the
strips as
its main street. It is therefore unlikely to have been an early settlement and
may
have grown up relatively late in the mediaeval period as a result of increasing
population.

3

With the development of Ness Road -
the main road out of the village to the north-east
- and the area between it and North Street, the village has, perhaps, taken on
more of
a B-shape, which seems quite appropriate. In fact, there has been continuous
and
widespread housing development here since the Second World War, and a lot of
flesh has
been put on the thin skeleton that the village plan resembled in the earlier
part of
the 20th century.

The name 'Burwell' derives from two Anglo-Saxon roots: burh,
meaning castle or fort,
and wielle, a spring.

4 Indeed, the remains of a castle can be
found, by a spring,
close to the ancient centre of High Town, just to the west of the church. This
castle,
though, was Norman, built in the 12th century, some 80 years after the last
Saxon king,
Harold II, was deposed by William the Conqueror in 1066: presumably an earlier
fortification existed in the vicinity, although it has not so far been
identified.
Christopher Taylor places it on the raised area around the church, observing
that 'the
line of the encircling defences is partly preserved by the curving line of
modern
streets round the hill.'5

This combination of fort and spring
would seem so common that there must be many
villages around the country with the name Burwell: in fact, there is just one
other, a
'pleasant village'6 and former market town on the A16, a few miles south of Louth in
Lincolnshire. Welbury in North Yorkshire, which may seem to be 'Burwell' the
other way
round, is derived from wielle, spring, and berg, the
hill on which it stands.7

1 Dr Charles Lucas, The Fenman's World2 Christopher Taylor, The Cambridgeshire Landscape3 Taylor, op. cit.4 The Place Names of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely,
P.H. Reaney
5 op. cit.6 Arthur Mee, The King's England - Lincolnshire7 The Place Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire, A.H.
Smith

This article and all the illustrations above are from Part One
of the
Illustrated Tour of Burwell